


No More Changes (I'll Still Love You The Same)

by ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand, AetherAria



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (but not... because he WANTS to be), (it ain't good y'all), (tho not THIS chapter certainly), Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Dysphoria, Curses, Damien Does Not Consider The Consequences Of His Words, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Lizard Kissin' Tuesday (Penumbra Podcast), Multi, Overstimulation, Panic Attacks, Rilla Is Queen Of Comfort, Second Citadel (Penumbra Podcast), The Keep Is Best Mom, human!arum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-11-28 00:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20957759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand/pseuds/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetherAria/pseuds/AetherAria
Summary: Lord Arum and his Keep have fought off curses before, but they have never dealt with one quite like this. They have never dealt with a curse while having a couple of humans around to help them, either... though it remains to be seen exactly how helpful Arum's lovers will be, in the effort of restoring him.





	1. Paint Me In Trust

**Author's Note:**

> We made ourselves sad. Now we are subjecting y'all to the sad. Am I sorry? ..... a little actually, yeah. I promise we'll make it better eventually tho. Sky, thank you SO much for throwing this concept at me and letting me just go berserk about it. I love you!!! Thank you for writing this with me!!! <3
> 
> Work title from the song Pristine, by Snail Mail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song Human, by Dodie.

It is instantaneous. Like a bolt of lightning.

Arum doesn't _scream_, not exactly. He inhales, sharp and shocked, and when he exhales it sounds as if he's being punched in the stomach, and he collapses to the ground, half-buried in his cape.

"_Arum_-" Rilla drops her recorder. Doesn't even notice it fall to the floor of the greenhouse as she sprints to the side of the lizard, going to her knees when she's close enough, but when she reaches to turn him onto his side to get a better look-

He feels _wrong_.

Soft. He feels soft. She pushes the cape aside, and when she rolls Arum onto his back, she finds a panting, glassy-eyed _human_ groaning softly into the folds of the cloth.

"What-" Rilla says blankly, and the human winces, curling into a tighter ball and making a choking sort of noise. "Who-"

"A-Ama-" he chokes, a hand lifting clumsily to press at his throat. "_Amaryllis_-" he manages, and Rilla loses her own breath.

"Oh Saints," Rilla says faintly. "Arum?"

"What-" he tries again, and his voice is pitched so low that she almost doesn't hear how horribly _ordinary_ it sounds. Soft. No rattle, no roughness to speak of. "Amaryllis, I- I can't-" he presses up on one arm (Rilla can only see _two_), but he slips, and she only barely catches him before he smacks his face into the dirt.

"Arum, I need you to _breathe_," she says, halfway on automatic. First steps. Baseline, while her brain races to try to understand exactly what just _happened_. "Keep," Rilla calls, voice understandably strained. "Keep, do you know what just- what that _was_?"

There is a pause, and Arum-the-human breathes short strained breaths in her arms, his muscles twitching and jerking. The Keep- sings vaguely, a song that sounds off key with itself. Uncertain, confused.

That song, that wavering, it seems to startle Arum to some sort of coherency, and he tilts his head back, squinting at the ceiling, and Rilla realizes with a sick jolt that his eyes, his human eyes, they aren't purple. They are without color entirely, pale and gray, set in a face that looks vaguely familiar but _wrong_, like a building remembered from childhood, with walls torn down and reconstructed past the point of recognition.

"Keep?" he asks, his new smooth-soft voice wavering uncertainly, and the Keep fails to answer right away a second time. It sings, after a long moment, and Arum's new unscaled brow furrows, his breath hitching. "Keep. Keep, I can't- speak again. I command you to-"

It sings again, and Rilla recognizes the lilt of desperation in the notes.

"Keep, I can't-" he pauses, snapping his jaw shut, and then he winces at that and presses his hand to his jaw for a clumsy moment before he lifts the hand further, his palm flexing in front of his horrified face. "What- what-"

"_Breathe_," Rilla says again, and Arum sucks in a breath as he lifts his other hand, and then he twists against her, his back arching just slightly, and she realizes that he's trying to move his other arms. The ones that aren't there, anymore.

"I-" he says, and then he looks up at her, pale gray eyes wide and damp at the corners. "I can't-" he lifts his hands, clumsy as they try to grip her shoulders, and she pulls him to sitting so he isn't entirely on the cold dirt, and his breaths come faster and sharper as he says, "Amaryllis I can't hear your _heart_-"

He's incoherent after that, for a while. Rilla nearly _screams_ in the effort of getting the Keep to understand her, to get it to focus for long enough to open a portal to Arum's room so she can carry him (easily, _Saints_ but this human body is slight), lift him into her arms while he just clings and hyperventilates until she can set him down in familiar sheets.

Arum keeps brushing his hands over his own skin and wincing, keeps twisting and flinching away from the sheets when he touches them, and Rilla knows overstimulation when she sees it and honestly there's a logic to that, isn't there? Arum has spent his entire life in scales, and he’s nowhere close to unfeeling, his scales are plenty sensitive in their own right but it's different from human skin and now he's- he's _human_, and-

She keeps trying to make her mind wrap around that. Trying to make it make _sense_. It doesn't, obviously.

Regardless of sense, it's _true_. Arum is, currently and uncomfortably, _human_. With smooth dark skin and grey eyes and dark hair that falls down around his shoulders in unkempt waves, with nearly a full foot of height stolen from him somewhere.

She shakes her head. Situation at hand, Rilla. One problem at a time. He's overstimulated, _terrified_ if the look in his eyes is anything to go by. She climbs up onto the bed beside him, and when he turns his panicked eyes towards her she tries a grim, sturdy little smile, and then she carefully, _gently_ pulls him into an embrace, arranging him so that his head is resting on her collarbone.

"Just breathe," she whispers. "Try to breathe _with_ me, okay? I know you're scared, and that's- honestly that's totally fair, but right now you have to calm down or you're gonna make yourself ill or make yourself pass out. Just- focus on my breathing, and try to make yourself slow down enough to breathe with me."

His body presses into hers, his hands alternately squeezing her and fluttering away when the contact gets too much, but after a moment he goes still, and his breathing hitches instead of slowing.

"Hey," she says softly. "Hey, _please_ Arum, you've gotta-"

"I can- I can hear your heart now. I- you need be _this close_? Amaryllis I feel- my ears and tongue and eyes and nose have been dulled by _half and half again_, how- how-"

"Oh," Rilla says, and she wonders if he can hear the way that makes her heart stumble with sympathy, with fear. "Oh sweetheart I'm sorry, but you have to- oh Arum-"

He clenches his jaw, clinging tighter against her, pressing his ear over her heart and pressing his eyes defiantly closed, but she can feel his shoulders shaking, can see the tracks of tears running down his face.

"Even _this_," he hisses miserably. "I don't- is it- is this why the poet is always-" he stops to shake for a moment. "I can't make this _stop_-"

"I know, sweetheart," she says in a whisper, and she tries not to follow right behind him into shaking, into weeping. "I've got you, I've got you." She doesn't tell him to breathe again. She merely rubs her hands as softly as she can on his back, holds him against her and lets him hear her steady, steady heart. She hums, and holds him, and lets his tears play out.

It takes a little while. That makes sense, too; it’s not as if Arum has much practice holding back tears like this.

“I- I’m- I apologize, Amaryllis," Arum mutters eventually, when he has managed at last to match his breathing to Rilla's, murmuring the words into the skin of her throat. "That was-” his mouth twists miserably, mortification clear on his face.

“Don’t. Arum, this is- I mean, as far as I know this is fairly unprecedented,” she says with a wry frown. “It’s a perfectly reasonable response to have.”

“Nevertheless,” he mutters, and then he pulls himself reluctantly away from her skin, sitting with a wince. He lifts his arms again, scowling as he looks down on overly soft, clear skin, on stubby fingers with blunt nails.

“So,” Rilla says, matter-of-fact. “This is magic, obviously.”

“_Obviously_,” he grumbles.

“And _obviously_, you know more about that than I do,” she says, a long-suffering sort of admission. “So, do you have any idea what could cause something like this? Any clues, any suspicions, any suspects?”

“Punishment.”

Rilla blinks. “Punishment?”

He sighs, winces, reaches a hand up to touch his own cheek. “Working for the Senate- I never should have put myself into that position. They have- they have _safeguards_ to prevent betrayal.”

“And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning before now?” Rilla asks incredulously.

“I have been… since the Terminus, since _us_, the Keep and I have been layering defenses, magical and otherwise. While the Senate scrambled to recover after the loss of their weapon- I thought- I hoped I would have enough time. I hoped that I would be unimportant enough to them to slip through the cracks, but-” he winces, his hand pressing against his throat for a moment and his eyes going distant and uncertain, and then he works his jaw awkwardly before he mutters, “I sound… so _strange_.”

“You were layering defenses,” Rilla redirects gently, softly touching his shoulder, hoping she can draw him back before the distress overwhelms him again. “How do you think this- whatever this is. How did it get through?”

Arum ducks his head. “I… the Keep and I… we focused our efforts mainly upon the swamp itself, and the Keep.”

“_What_,” Rilla says, voice blank with horror. “What about _you_, you idiot?”

“The Keep is more important,” he hisses, his eyes slipping closed. “Protecting it is my _purpose_, Amaryllis. If it dies, so too does this entire swamp. And so too would I, as well. It is not entirely unselfish. If the Keep dies, everything here dies with it. If I die…” he shrugs. “I would _rather not_, obviously, but if I die, the Keep survives. It produces another familiar, and it continues to create and nurture life and magic in this place.”

“_Rather not_,” Rilla says faintly. “Arum-”

“It is not a choice I enjoy making, but it is an _easy_ choice, in the end.”

Rilla hates that a part of her understands his logic. Most of her, though, is furious that he would discount himself that way. “Next time maybe try protecting _both_, jackass,” she says, her voice wavering.

He smiles, grim and strange. “Next time,” he echoes.

“So,” Rilla says, shaking her head and clearing her throat. “So. It’s probably the Senate, or someone working for them,” she says. “That’s a good theory, and I think it’s safe to run with it. So, why _this_? Why turn you into a human? Why not just-”

“Kill me?” He laughs. “I am certain some would have preferred that. But there is a certain… rationale to this. A clear message in the execution. I have aligned myself with humans, yes? This is all to say that if I would join them, I may do it _properly_.”

Rilla feels her stomach twist. “You think they know about _us_?” she asks, her voice low.

“Doubtful,” he says with a sigh. “Not the two of you _specifically_, at least. But they are aware that I was responsible for the destruction of the Hermit, they are aware that I was _not_ cast off the edge of the world, and they are aware of… _rumors_.”

“Rumors.”

He glances to her, his entire expression gone soft and open. “Of a human claiming, quite publicly, to love me.”

Her heart _plummets_. It must show on her face, because Arum blinks in surprise and reaches a clumsy hand up to touch her shoulder.

“Amaryllis-”

“This is because- because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut? Saints I’m so-” she clenches her teeth, “_stupid_, Arum I’m-”

“Hush,” Arum says, frowning. “Don’t be foolish. This is not your _fault_, no more than it is the fault of a certain _knight_ for failing to kill me. There are rumors of that, as well, you know. The _fault_ lies solely with whoever concocted this spiteful little scheme.”

“Still,” Rilla says, her brow furrowed. “Still. If it contributed-”

“Hush,” he says again, the hand on her shoulder squeezing gently. “You did not do this to me.”

“No,” she says with a sigh, and then she straightens, her eyes taking on a determined glint as she pulls Arum’s hand into her own. “No, but I’m gonna be the one who helps you _fix_ it.”

Arum’s expression falls again, open and raw, and Rilla’s heart clenches for all the ways he clearly does not know how to hide his feelings in this body.

“Y-yes,” he says, his voice wavering.

“If someone _did_ this,” Rilla says with a scowl, “we can _un_do it.”

He stares at her for a moment, grateful, surprised, hopeful, and then tears roll over Arum’s cheeks again, and he swipes at his face with his jaw clenched hard as Rilla makes a small noise, pulling him close.

"The lot of you creatures can't _possibly_ feel this way at every moment,” he mutters viciously, struggling in the effort to push back the tears, to control the shaking in his voice. “As if- as if every touch is scalding and sharp, as if you can only half interpret the world, all sense sliced to unsatisfactory fractions. As if you are but a breath from breaking at all moments. You cannot _possibly_ feel this way."

“No,” Rilla says softly. “No, I think that’s- that’s just by comparison. Your senses are a hell of a lot keener than ours, and your scales provide a lot more natural protection. If I got suddenly put in a body like yours, I bet I’d be overwhelmed by all the new noises and smells and sights, and I’d feel like my sense of touch got all wrapped up in cotton or dipped in wax. It’d be distressing in just the opposite way.”

That makes… a certain amount of sense. Arum grumbles under his breath and winces when the noise is not accompanied by the usual growl. It feels as if someone reached into his throat and replaced his own vocal chords with some foreign flute. Not that that particular point is the worst of this, but it is _distracting_.

“Shit,” Rilla says softly, and Arum blinks and focuses back on her.

“What?”

“I was supposed to-” she sighs. “I have to go send an entire frickin’ _flock_ of pigeons, now. I don’t have time to deal with my regular appointments while we’re busy fixing this.”

Arum’s heart lurches in two completely different directions at once, both grateful that she would put her work, her healing aside temporarily for him, and simultaneously wracked with nerves at the idea that she is going to leave him alone in this state, even for a little while. He swallows roughly.

She’s too perceptive for his own good, though. She notices the look on his face, and when she smiles softly he wishes he could growl at the sympathy in her eyes. He frowns instead, hoping it carries some measure of his ire.

“I won’t be long,” she says softly. “I just need to send some messages and gather some materials and notes that might be handy. Tell you what, though- Damien should be getting out of his meeting soon and he was already planning on springing a surprise visit today-” she pauses to grin a little more playfully. “Ruined the surprise on that one, but I’m sure the both of you will forgive me. Anyway, he’s free for the rest of the day, so I’ll give him the rundown and he can come through and help you out for a bit while I’m taking care of the unavoidable stuff. Sound fair?”

Arum wrinkles his strange short nose, seething that she would imply he requires _help_-

But he _does_ need some measure of help, actually. Loathe as he is to admit it. He can barely manage to stand without his tail, with his legs so short and oddly bent. And Amaryllis has done very much in their time together, to help him understand that she and Damien will not judge him for this. That they _want_ to help, when he so needs. And it is still... _difficult_, but Arum is trying. If ever he had no choice but to be vulnerable, now is that time. At least the universe is kind enough to bring him so low while he has such bright creatures to hold him and help him. Small miracles within such a nightmare.

He sighs, curling his arms awkwardly around his knees. “Very well, Amaryllis.”

“I won’t be long,” she says again as she slips from the bed, and then she leans back down and presses a kiss to his brow. It feels so much more vivid, the pressure more intense but less warm, on skin rather than scales. “Try to rest in the meantime, though, okay?”

“Rest,” Arum mutters derisively. “As if I can go cavorting with these malformed limbs-”

“Your body went through one hell of a shock,” she barrels on, pretending as if she didn’t even hear him. “I don’t want you to strain yourself any more than strictly necessary. Okay?”

He grumbles again, but she looks down at him sternly, her hands on her hips.

“_Okay_, Arum?”

He narrows his eyes at her, and his face feels hot. “Yes, _doctor_,” he mutters, but then he leans towards her in the familiar way, an unspoken request.

Her frown softens, and she bends to embrace him gently and press another kiss to his cheek, and before she pulls away she murmurs, “We’ll fix this. Whatever it takes.”

His throat is tight and hot and horrible for a moment, but he nods. “Whatever it takes,” he echoes, and then he allows her to settle the blankets around his shoulders before she calls for a portal to her hut.

The Keep takes a few extra moments to listen, but it _does_ listen, and when Rilla is gone and the portal is closed and Arum is alone, and human, and _alone_, he finally pinpoints a feeling that has been squirming at the back of his mind since he collapsed in the greenhouse.

He feels half deafened, with these strange human ears. It is less dramatic than the weakness of his vision, or the utter travesty of his olfactory capabilities.

But his limited hearing is not the reason that all around him feels so… muffled.

Arum realizes, at last, the final strangeness of this transformation. The final cruelty. It is quiet, now that Amaryllis has left him. More than that, though. It is _silent_, in a foreign way. The Keep creaks around him as always, but Arum finally realizes what has been missing.

He cannot _hear_ the Keep. Not really. He cannot feel it. He cannot _sense_ it, steady at the edges of his mind, where its presence has always before been, sturdy and safe. Even when it slept after its illness, Arum could still _feel_ that it was there, even if it was not aware or present. Now, though.

Now, Arum is alone.

Alone in his own mind, wearing skin that does not fit him, helpless as a hatchling without even his closest kin for comfort.

Arum closes his eyes. He does not have the strength for anything else, just now. He curls into as tight a ball as he can manage, his cape and his blankets an overwhelming pressure he cannot stand to remove, and he settles in to wait for one of his lovers to return.


	2. Who You Pretend I Am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damien knows that he needs to comfort his lily, but finding the right words to do so proves to be far more difficult than the poet expects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We promised there would be a happy ending. We stand by that. But we did not say that it wouldn't get worse before it got better.
> 
> Chapter title from the song Washing Machine Heart, by Mitski.

When Rilla sends Damien through the portal to the Keep - practically _shoves_ him through, honestly, so that she can run off to cancel a week’s worth of appointments - he isn’t really sure what to expect.

(Rilla dashes his expectations of a quiet, tender day spent together the moment he steps into the hut, his heart sinking at the sight of her frantic and darting from tome to tome even before she notices him and leaps to snag his wrist.

“Arum’s been cursed,” she says without preamble, a desperate sort of wildfire in her eyes, “probably by the Senate. He’s not _hurt_, not exactly,” she says, squeezing his hands when she sees the way the blood drains from his face. “But he’s scared and overwhelmed and I think that the transformation is screwing with the Keep- with his _connection_ to the Keep, too.”

“T-_transformation_?” Damien says, sounding strangled, and Rilla winces and sighs.

“I don’t know how they did it. And we’re going to _fix_ it.” She pauses. “_Somehow_. But they made him human.”)

Damien furrows his brow, and contemplates the word _curse_.

Damien was wrong, before, about the nature of monsters. Or- about the idea that all monsters have the _same_ nature, at the very least. He knows, of course, that it is _good_ that he knows this now, even if it makes his life more complicated. There are monsters who are capable of so much more than he could have ever dreamed, ever expected. Evil is not _inherent_ to monsterkind, just as all humans are not intrinsically _good_. Arum, in all his complex beauty, holds the majority of the responsibility for teaching Damien this lesson.

… However.

Damien has thought, not infrequently, of how much less painful it would have been, to transition with Rilla into this wider, more complicated relationship that they now share with Arum, if only Arum had been human.

There is just… something very human about him. Not just in his eyes, not just the attraction Damien now recognizes from their first encounter. Damien can imagine it so _easily_, Arum as the son of some aristocrat, prideful and easily flustered, an architect but without the overlay of dangerous magic. Damien can imagine meeting him any number of ways- at some festival, perhaps. Or- perhaps Damien would be assigned to guard a traveling party including this Arum, and they might speak - as men speak, without knives and bows - and get to know each other in the ordinary way.

It would still not have been _painless_, of course. He certainly would have still been plagued by guilt over the idea of betraying his dearest Rilla when Arum spurred the heat of his affection, and certainly when this human Arum and Rilla met, Damien would have been filled with feelings of betrayal on the other side. He knows himself well enough to admit that.

But… if there had not been the conflict- the friction- the entirety of a _war_ between them-

Damien cannot sleep, some nights, for the guilt that writhes like a poison inside of him. Guilt, and shame, and when Arum sleeps soundly in the same bed, Damien feels as if he could die from his mistakes. He nearly killed- he nearly _murdered_ a creature so loving and wonderful, so clever and rare and beautiful-

Damien cannot imagine that he would have ever threatened Arum’s life, had he been human.

And so Damien wonders, at times, what it would have been like, to love Arum without knowing how it felt to nearly kill him first.

Rilla said she left Arum in the bedroom. Damien declines to ask the Keep for a portal from the greenhouse- it seems rude to strain the poor creature if it is disoriented, as Rilla suspects. If this also allows Damien to collect himself as he walks, to think a bit before he sees Arum in his new human skin, perhaps that is a benefit as well.

He knocks on the bedroom door. It has been… quite some time, since Damien felt any call to do this.

“Arum?” he says softly, nerves jumping in his stomach. “May I… may I come in?”

There is a brief moment, some quiet rustling, and then a voice calls, “You need not knock, you know. I’m hardly going to lock you _out_.”

The voice- Arum’s voice-

It is such a stark difference, the way that the rattle, the rasp has been sheared away, leaving a voice that sounds so _similar_ but so entirely strange, so new. Damien is distracted enough that he almost doesn’t comprehend the actual words Arum says for a long moment. He blinks back to himself, and opens the door.

Arum is standing, leaning against the bed, one unclawed hand supporting him against the blankets as he looks at Damien with his head ducked defensively, and Damien feels as if he would _know_ that this human were Arum even if he met him on the street, without context, and he cannot help but stare.

Oh. Oh, but his _eyes_-

They are still sharp, still bright with cleverness, but there are no violets here. In fact, there is no color to speak of. His eyes are gray, and light, and cool like a pair of silver coins. His robes are overlarge on this new smaller frame, hanging at his shoulders and making Damien keenly aware of his bare neck, his collarbone. Arum’s unscaled skin is dark and smooth, his nose handsomely curved, his lips soft and frowning, and his hair is long and wavy and tangled in a way that sends a sharp sting of temptation through Damien, a hungry desire to run his hands through the softness and help to tame those tangles-

Damien presses a hand over his heart. He takes a breath, and steps forward.

“Forgive me, my lily,” he says gently. “Rilla warned me, of course, but- still it was hard to believe until I saw with my own eyes.”

“Yes, well,” Arum’s lip pulls into an even deeper frown, and Damien finds himself _fascinated_ by the curve of it, by the expressive elasticity of this new face his lover wears. “It is _unbelievable_, but rather unfortunately _true_.”

Damien does not need to look nearly as far upward as he usually does, to meet Arum’s desaturated eyes. He steps closer to the bed, and Arum continues to glare, irritation and discomfort obvious on his face.

“Oh, my dearest creature,” Damien says gently. He lifts his hand to caress Arum’s cheek, and Arum twitches, baring his teeth just slightly. “This must be terribly trying for you.”

Arum huffs. “I don’t have the first clue how the lot of you manage to _move_ without a tail, how you manage to exist at _all_ in such a fragile state-”

“We make do,” Damien says with a wry smile. “As will you.” He pauses. “For- for however long this lasts, of course.”

“With _my_ luck,” Arum sneers, clenching his fists so his claws- no, his _nails_ dig into his palms. After a moment, the tension in his frame softens, and then he sighs. “No, no. Amaryllis- between myself and Amaryllis- the three of us together- I must believe that it will not be long.”

“Of course not,” Damien says automatically, and Arum’s jaw clenches before he sighs again.

Arum lifts his hand from the bed and wobbles slightly, and Damien steadies him, curling a hand around his back. Arum stiffens, again, but after a breath he leans into Damien.

“I’m sick of this room,” he mutters, not looking at the knight. “Let’s go- the kitchen, the scroll room, the snail garden, I don’t _care_ but I won’t sit helpless in that bed another moment.”

“Rilla was _quite_ insistent that you rest,” Damien says, mild. Arum scowls in response, and Damien probably shouldn’t find it as cute as he does, the way his nose wrinkles with the force of his irritation.

“And I will surely acquiesce to her expertise,” he drawls, “but I need not rest confined _here_. A balcony. Some _air_,” he decides. “Keep, a portal to-”

He stops himself, his expression going entirely still, and there is a strange brightness in his grey eyes that Damien does not know what to do with.

“Perhaps it would be best not to bother the poor thing,” Damien suggests. “Certainly there is a balcony close enough that we may walk there without much strain, yes?”

“Of course,” Arum agrees, voice low. “Come, then, honeysuckle.”

Arum leans more fully on Damien, slinging his arm around his shoulder with an odd little wince, and the poet leads them out into the halls, guiding Arum’s steps. Their progress is heartbreakingly slow- Damien has to bite his tongue to keep from spouting words of sympathy whenever Arum stumbles, when his ankles wobble, when he huffs out bitter, frustrated breaths. Damien knows that Arum abhors sympathy; he finds it performative. Demeaning. Damien feels himself lucky enough that his beloved is willing to allow him to help even _this_ much while he acclimates to this new form.

Arum’s gait improves a bit even by the time they reach the balcony Arum has in mind, an enormous ensconced bulb of soft thick leaves opening high over the swamp, high enough that they won’t possibly be visible from below and circled with dense mossy seating.

Arum releases his grip on Damien and awkwardly sinks to sitting on one of the mounds of softness, wincing and resettling his legs underneath him twice before he seems to find a comfortable position, and after a moment Damien sits beside him, staring out over the swamp with a deep sigh.

“_Rest_,” Arum mutters bitterly. “As if I could possibly _rest_ in this state.”

Damien glances to the side, watching as Arum curls his hands into impotent claws, his entire face contorting in a scowl.

“I find it is best to take our darling Rilla’s advice, even when it seems difficult,” Damien says, and Arum scowls even harder.

“Am I not doing so? Am I not, despite my deepest instincts, sitting idly while this affliction settles into my malformed new bones, merely because _she_ advised I do so?” he says in a bark, his eyes flashing furiously towards Damien. He winces quickly after, though, his shoulders sinking. “I am… _trying_. I am trusting. I know that I will not be able to do anything to mitigate this damage without my-” he breaks off. “On my own,” he finishes. “So all I may do until Amaryllis returns is… _nothing_.”

“Oh, my lily,” Damien breathes, pressing a hand over his heart again as if that could stop it from skipping. “I am so terribly sorry. How- is there anything-” Damien’s hands flutter in his own lap, unsure. “I know I am not- _skilled_ in such a way as Amaryllis, and I cannot help as she can, but- is there nothing I can do, to help you in this moment?”

Arum scoffs, but there is no heat in it, and after a long moment of hesitation he closes his eyes and exhales.

“I cannot even… I should be able to hear the swamp, from here. The song of the frogs. The cries of bugs. It is all- it is too quiet, honeysuckle,” he says softly.

Damien stares, and Arum’s face is soft and still and enthralling and strange. “I am sorry,” he says again, because he finds he does not know what else to say.

Arum frowns, and his eyes slit back open. “Damien,” he says, a strange note of leading in his voice. “Are you not made for filling silences?” he asks.

“O-oh.”

“You are a prattler, honeysuckle,” Arum says, closing his eyes again and leaning more fully into the bed of foliage beneath him. “Prattle.”

“What-” Damien flounders, squirming where he sits for a moment. “What would you have me say?”

“Anything.” Arum shakes his head. “Distract me,” he says in a voice so quiet that Damien might miss it if he were not so close. “Please.”

“O-of course, love,” Damien says, though he still has no idea whatsoever what to say. “Of course.”

Poetry- does not feel right. Not even his own. What, should he give Arum words he composed in reverence of his scales and teeth and violet eyes? Should he remind Arum of that which he no longer possesses? A cruelty, certainly. And any other poems he knows- if they mention monsterkind it is only ever in one light, and Arum needs not hear that just now, either.

Comfort. What Arum needs just now is comfort. What must he be fearing most? He seems reluctant towards touch- perhaps he is afraid that Damien will not wish to touch him in this state, that Damien will not understand that beneath this new form it is still his Arum, his lily. He can allay those fears, at least.

“I love you,” he starts, soft and earnest, and his heart flutters when Arum startles, blinking his eyes open to give Damien the same surprised-pleased look that he always does when Damien offers his affection with such ease. Such a familiar look, at home in a new face. “I am sorry you have been so maligned, darling, but no curse could ever tear my heart from you. None.”

He lifts his hand, giving in to the temptation and brushing his fingers along Arum’s cheek (he flinches still- oh dear creature, why flinch from affection?) and softly stroking his hair.

“I-” Arum makes a noise, a choking laugh or a scoff that lost its way. “I- I know _that_, honeysuckle. And- and it is _not permanent_, so it matters not regardless. Certainly we will not even have the time to contemplate it. This- this skin is a temporary falsehood, soon to be cast aside.”

“Still, my lily,” Damien tries again, even more gently. “I would love you in _any_ form. In any skin.”

Arum does not answer that. He clenches his jaw, neither leaning into Damien’s hand nor pulling away.

“Rilla and I will love you no matter the circumstances,” he says. “And- and if any curse were to befall you, I am terribly grateful that it should be one like this.”

Arum’s face goes blank, then, and still as a marble statue. “Grateful,” he murmurs, in his clear new voice.

“A curse that can reach out and take you even within the walls of your clever and powerful home? Arum, I am grateful that if such should occur, that you are still _alive_ to fight back against it! That Rilla did not find you bleeding and broken-”

Arum laughs, strangely.

“My lily- it _terrifies_ me that they could place such magic upon you. To my _core_. But- but don’t you see that it could have been anything! It could have been- you could have been struck by _anything_. Any pain, any destruction wrought upon the Keep itself- it is, of course, terrible that any such attack be mustered against you, but among all possibilities-” Damien pauses for breath, and his next words come soft, and calm. “Perhaps, my lily, it is not so terrible a fate. It could have been so much worse! You of all people know what the Senate is capable of- without any magic whatsoever, they nearly _killed you_ once already!”

Arum’s eyes flash and he huffs out a bitter laugh. “They might as well have.”

“But, my love, surely this is far better than the alternative! There are far worse things in this world than to be than human.”

Arum narrows his eyes. “And just what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

Damien senses Arum’s discomfort, so he pulls his hand back from Arum’s hair, stroking his knuckles down his new smooth cheek instead. “I only mean, my love, that perhaps there are some benefits to this… unfortunate turn of events. Maybe this will turn out to be a blessing in the end! After all, I can finally kiss you properly," Damien says with a laugh, and he feels as if he is a paper lantern, full of light and air and ready to rise, but when he leans towards Arum, he flinches.

"Properly," Arum says, and the old rough edges of his voice are gone. This roughness in his voice now is _new_. "And what, precisely, did you consider the affection between us when I was myself?"

"I..." Damien blinks. "Arum, I only meant-"

"No. You said precisely what you _meant_." Arum leans away, and then he musters himself and scrabbles awkwardly to standing, wobbling on his toes, and he does not seem to know how to keep the expression on his face from going raw and furious. "I am _glad_ for you, then, that this curse has made it so I am no longer such an _inconvenience_ to you."

"I did not say-” Damien scrambles to his feet as well, his heart racing in panic at the look on Arum’s face. “But- but don't you see that this solves- I am not saying that we should not _attempt_ to reverse this transformation, if we are somehow able, but _if_ this is not something we have the power to overcome you must know that I will stand with you-”

“For this- for _this_ obstacle, your tenacity fails you? For this and this alone, your fervor, your fire and determination cannot match the task for even an hour before you contemplate accepting failure with a _laugh_?”

“No,” Damien says, shaking his head, and he is not sure how this conversation has escaped him so fully already. “No, of course I am not giving up on your monstrous form-”

“My _only_ form. _Me_.”

“I am not saying we should lay down and accept! Certainly not,” he says, and Arum scoffs. “_But_, I think it is worth acknowledging the _possibility_. Worth acknowledging that even if we fail, it will be something that we can survive. That it would not be the _worst_ of fates that you could be subject to.”

“Survive,” Arum echoes, the disdain dripping from his new smooth tone. “An interesting choice of words. _We_ can survive.”

“Arum,” Damien says, stepping closer again, and Arum-

Arum tries to hiss. It doesn’t work, exactly; his mouth goes wide though he does not know how to use his new tongue to simulate his old sounds, but Damien is stunned enough that he stops.

“I do not believe that _my_ survival or the survival of my _Keep_ are on your mind just now, honeysuckle,” Arum says darkly. “Your mind is _elsewhere_.”

“Of course your survival- Arum, Arum you do not know how persistently I fear for your safety. How it weighs on me to know that any of my comrades could happen to destroy you and never know what a unique, wonderful, _special_ creature they would be robbing from this world! With this- with this form-”

Arum sneers, but Damien rushes on ahead, his voice going sharp.

“If you remain human I need not fear that fate for you. Can you not understand that? As you are now- you can walk amongst my friends and people in safety, without fear of judgment or harm!”

“Just because I do not _look_ like a monster does not mean that is not what I _am_. Do you think your Citadel would _hesitate_ to slay me where I stood were they even to _suspect_ my origins? I have no interest in walking among those who would sooner see me dead. Just because I could _pass_ for a human in this blighted state does not change the fact that I am _not_ one. I never will be.”

“My lily, oh, but we no longer need hide!" Damien steps closer, reaching out. Arum stumbles away another step, and Damien leaves his hand hanging in the air as Arum grits his teeth. "I have dreamed so many times of kissing you beneath Saint Damien's bells, of dancing there with you and Rilla at the Festival of the Three, dancing in truth and not simply in the metaphor of the duel, of loving you without needing to fear losing you to the blade of my own comrades-"

"For all your talk of knightly virtues you are hideously _selfish_," Arum growls, growls despite the unfamiliar mouth he must use, and Damien stops short.

"_Selfish_? Arum, I know this is unexpected and challenging, but if by some chance it is permanent, it is not completely _bad_. This change could only improve our-"

"Get out."

"Wh-what?"

"I said _leave_." Arum slashes an arm through the air, then pulls the limb back towards his body with an uncomfortable wince. "I don't care what Amaryllis said. I do not require looking after. I do not want you here, I do not need you here. Get out."

"But... Arum, I assure you I did not mean to imply... Arum, you know how I adore you-"

"Keep. Keep, a portal to the hut _now_." Arum pauses, his jaw clenched uncomfortably tight. "Keep." He pauses again, and then his lip twists down in misery, his hands curling into not-quite-claws as his shoulders hunch even further. "Keep, _please_."

The portal raises, sluggish and uncertain, and Arum, if anything, looks even more miserable.

"I do not wish to leave you like this," Damien says softly. "My words were poorly chosen, and I regret that. I should know to be more precise with my language-"

"Precision is not the issue." Arum lifts his eyes, and Damien feels a little bittersweet pang to see the ordinary pale gray, the ordinary round irises. "When I have- when I say, Damien, that I love you, I do not say so and then wish that you were _different_. I would not _prefer_ you some other way. I love you as you are. Human." He turns his nose up, just slightly. "Flawed."

It's a little like being kicked. "Arum-"

"I ask that you leave, Sir Damien. Amaryllis demanded that I rest, and I will not rest while you are here."

"But you must understand how much of a boon-"

"You are not _listening_ to me. _Get out_," Arum snarls. "Do not make me ask you again."

Arum’s eyes have gone bright, this miserable twist of his mouth overtly tearful. “Oh, Arum-”

“Oh,” Arum says with a vicious, false laugh as he swipes his hands clumsily over his face, disrupting the tracks of tears as quickly as they come. “Oh, so fury as well spurs this incessant weeping? Fear, yes, and sorrow, enough sense is made there, but even in anger I am forced into this ridiculous hiccuping folly?”

“Arum,” Damien says, his heart pulling as he steps forward, but Arum stumbles awkwardly back until he is pressed against the bark wall of the balcony, baring his teeth in a way that manages to look inhuman even on his human face.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare touch me. I told you to leave and I _meant_ it. Would you ignore my wishes now, Sir Damien, when I am inarguably too _weak_,” he spits the word, voice cracking in the middle, “to do anything to stop you? There seems nothing _honorable_ in that.”

“_No_,” Damien says, wide-eyed and shaking his head. “No, of course I don’t wish to- I merely- I cannot stand the thought of leaving you like this when you are clearly in such a state of-”

“And I cannot stand to be _near_ you in such a state,” Arum says, his voice more waver than tone. “_Leave_,” he roars, and Damien-

Damien doesn’t have the opportunity to argue again, because the Keep drops a trio of vines, and gently but firmly shoves Damien back through the portal, and then Damien is gone.

* * *

Damien is gone. The portal closes, and Arum is alone. He stands, keenly aware of too much ill-fitting fabric still overwhelming his skin. His breaths come in shuddering gasps, and he doesn’t know what to _do_ with himself. He doesn’t trust himself to walk anywhere successfully, and he isn’t keen on falling again, so instead he just sits down where he is. Collapses, really, into a heap on the ground.

The Keep warbles at him, and he can hear a vague question and the concern that bleeds through its tone but-

“Keep, I-” He breaks off and chokes back the lump in his throat, feeling the tears filling his eyes again and hating this all the more for that, because he can’t control that either. “I can’t understand you. I can't-”

He hunches in on himself, suddenly and keenly aware of just how alone he is. He feels more isolated, even, then when he pushed Amaryllis out the door after they soothed the Keep to sleep. Even then, he had thought it for the best. He didn’t want her to go, but she had done her job and she had to go home, to leave before he became too weak to let her slip through his greedy grasp, and he’d known the Keep would soon awaken well-rested and healthy again.

Now, he wants so desperately for Amaryllis to return and insist that they can fix this. For the Keep’s soft influence in his mind, letting him know that they will both be alright. That they will make it through this. But he is, for the first time, completely and utterly alone. "Keep, please, I-"

He can't finish the sentence. He's not sure what he would have said anyway. And it doesn't even matter, does it? He cannot communicate with the Keep anyway. He has no words for the sharpness of his isolation. Instead, a sob wracks through his body and he wraps his arms around his waist and curls in on himself even further, and he is utterly unable to stop the tears as they come.

The Keep sings something around him, uncertain and distant, and every unconveyed message makes Arum feel even more broken. Even more _alone_. He can’t stop the way his breaths go ragged and violent, either, or the way his heart is thudding, or the way that no matter how fast he scrubs the wetness from his cheeks he simply can’t outpace his own tears, and he _burns_ with hatred for this body he is trapped in.

The song comes again, merely music now. Arum fists his hands over his ears, dulling the already dull sense even further. He can’t _understand_, so why listen?

The third time the Keep sings to him, the melody is followed by touch. Arum jerks in surprise, but even with skin this sensitive the Keep’s vines are too familiar and a shuddering sigh leaves him as the Keep wraps him up in the closest it can get to a cocoon of comfort. Ordinarily he would push the vines off, would snap that he is not a hatchling to be _coddled_, but the cool leaves are soft and gentle and familiar, and he leans as much as he can into the embrace.

Cocooned in the moss and vines and leaves, Arum almost believes he could leave this body behind and become one with the Keep again, could sink into the green and lose himself entirely. He can’t understand the gentle coos vibrating through the space all around him, but he _feels_ them nonetheless, and even without words its message is clear.

_I__’m here. I’m here. I love you. I’m still here_.

Not alone. It’s not the same, without their link, without the easy language that should pass between them, but Arum isn’t alone. Even with this barrier between them, he still has his Keep. It will still protect him, just as he will always, _always_ protect it.

At least he can be grateful for that. The Keep will be here for him, even if Damien-

Even if Damien-

Amaryllis promised to help him fix this. To help him restore himself.

Did she really _mean_ that? Or was she merely trying to help him stay steady and coherent in the moment?

Does she think as Sir Damien does?

… and if the _both_ of them prefer him this way… if both of them wish he were human…

"What do I _do_?" he asks, and he hates this weakness, hates not even knowing if his Keep understands him, hates that even if it _does_ he cannot hear any advice it might offer, cannot even feel the comfort it would try to send through their link- “Keep, I-”

Will they make him choose? Will Sir Damien and Amaryllis make him weigh that scale, between keeping them, keeping their love, and restoring himself?

“Keep…”

The Keep sings an airy triplet, gentle acknowledgment he can understand even without feeling it in his mind.

“Perhaps…” he whispers. “Perhaps this bond was doomed from the start, Keep.” He curls tighter, tighter, and the Keep’s vines and leaves caress and soothe as best they are able. “Perhaps this is merely revealing what was always true. I should never have expected _humans_ to love a monster. Not truly. Not without conditions, not without an underlying desire for something _better_.”

The Keep squeezes him softly, and he knows that it has understood him as it warbles… _something_. He cannot know what it means to impart with this wordless, unparseable song.

The Keep knows _many_ songs, though. Some, even a human can understand.

So the Keep sways him, swaddled and safe in its hanging bramble, and it sings him something he might sing along with. It sings him a song that he carries in his heart already. It sings to him a song he shares, a song that has passed hands from monster to human or human to monster, and it does not matter which.

_I_ _’ll float down with her-_

Arum breaks. It shudders through him like poison, like a blade, the breathless hopeless sorrow of this _curse_, but his Keep holds him all the same. It holds him, and it sings, and it sings, and it sings.

If he cannot be whole, Arum thinks, at least in this moment he may still be held.


	3. Good Intentions, Never Good Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damien and Rilla have a conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It didn't feel right to put out this chapter on LKT for this week, considering that Arum himself does not feature this go around. Hope you're still sticking with us! Next chapter will be... softer. Also, oops! This whole thing got another chapter longer... again.
> 
> Chapter title from the song Get Out, by CHVRCHES.

The Keep does not push him _hard_, but Damien still loses his footing as he careens backward through the portal, landing hard on his backside with his breath escaping in a whoosh. He scrambles back up, but the portal is already inactive again, vines sinking back into the wide flowerpot beside the fireplace.

“No, _please_,” Damien pleads, “please, Keep, he mustn’t be alone like this, he must _understand_-”

He cannot tell if it is listening at all. The vines disappear into the dark displaced swamp soil, and no echo of the Keep’s soft magic melody remains.

“Keep I cannot stand that he has been- been _wounded_ so- you must let me back! I must find the words to-”

“Damien?”

Rilla is in the doorway to the kitchen, her medical bag and two more besides slung at her side, and she frowns as she sets them down.

“Rilla-”

“Why are you back?” she asks, her tone blank and clipped.

“I-” Damien breaks off, glancing at the flowerpot again. “We-”

Rilla waits, folding her arms over her chest.

“Arum was- _upset_,” Damien says weakly, but then his lip twists miserably down and his shoulders hunch. “I spoke carelessly,” he admits, halfway to a groan. “I spoke rashly and carelessly and Arum- Arum and I- we _disagreed_.” He pauses. “Argued.” He pauses again. “We… fought.”

There is some calculation in Rilla’s eyes, and she pulls her medical bag off her shoulder too and steps towards him. “Tell me what happened,” she says, and then she touches his elbow gently and maneuvers the both of them to sit in the little nook beside her front window.

“He- Rilla I was only-” Damien gasps, then realizes belatedly that he’s wringing his hands like a misbehaving child. “I- I don’t- I merely wanted- oh Rilla, oh my flower- oh Saint Damien above, I-”

“Stop,” Rilla says firmly, taking his hands in her own and squeezing them. “Breathe. Just tell me what happened.”

Damien inhales sharply, but Rilla squeezes his hands again and gives an exaggerated slow breath of her own, leading him until he matches her.

“You said you spoke rashly and carelessly, and then you fought about it,” Rilla leads, once he’s more calm. “Damien. Tell me what you said to him.”

“Oh Saint Damien,” he whispers. “Oh, oh tranquility, please-”

Rilla is patient, but the expectant look on her face does not waver. Damien closes his eyes. He forces himself to tranquility, feeling Rilla’s touch like an anchor, and then he explains. He does not decorate, he does not comment, not upon his own words or those of Arum, and he does his level best to convey the scene accurately. Objectively. When his voice cracks, when he wavers, Rilla’s thumbs press into his palms, pulling him back to the moment, to the story. Somewhere near halfway through, Rilla's expression doesn't change, really, but it… _freezes_, goes stiff in a concerning way. She doesn’t let him stop telling the story, though. She only shakes her head, and urges him to continue until he makes it to the end, until he runs out of words.

“And then the Keep- the Keep- it ejected me,” he finishes lamely. “As- as you know, of course.”

Rilla presses her lips together, inhaling deeply, and Damien, perhaps, panics.

“I had no intention to make him feel- I did not _mean_ for him to take my words so- with so much pain. I am- words are- I am a _poet_, I should have a better grasp upon the way that words can wound. I am ashamed that he was so hurt-”

“Damien, I don’t think-”

"Rilla, my flower, surely _you_ understand! But I simply need to find the right words to make _him_ see- this transition is certainly trying for all of us, but even if we fail to overcome this attack, we will still love him! And if such is the case, will we not, in certain ways, be better off? Would this not remove the most dire obstacle to our safety and freedom and happiness?"

"_Damien_." Rilla sighs, and then she turns more fully towards him, letting go of one of his hands so she can cup his cheek when she meets his eye. "Damien, I need to know that you are listening to me right now, and not going off in your own head. Are you listening?"

"Of course." Damien nods feverishly. If anyone knows how to make their beloved understand- "Please. You know how to cut through to the heart of things, my flower. Please, please tell me what I need to do."

"What you need to do, Damien, is actually _stop and think for two seconds_." Damien blinks, and Rilla’s expression tilts into a stern frown. "This isn't just a _trying transition_. This was an _attack_. This is something that was done to Arum without his permission, something done for the _sole purpose_ of hurting him. Of making him _suffer_. He can't talk to the Keep the same anymore. Evidence suggests that it can't _hear_ him the same. Even something as simple as walking is strange to him now. He can't express himself the same, or see or smell or hear all the things he's been able to for his _entire life_. He's never had _skin_ like this before, and it's so much more sensitive than his scales that clearly it almost _hurts_." She takes a deep breath. "And what you just told him, right now? You just told him that every part of this that is inconvenient and unpleasant and invasive and _painful_ doesn't matter to you, because you, Damien, _like him better this way_."

"But-" Damien stumbles, stutters. "But-"

"You said this removed an obstacle to our happiness. Are you saying you aren’t happy with Arum?"

"Don't- Rilla, of course that's not what I-"

"You said freedom, too. Do you consider being in love with a monster to be a burden?"

"Stop, you're twisting what I-"

"_You_ said these things, Damien. I'm just showing you what they _mean_."

Damien feels his heart like a stone, heavy and rolling behind the cage of his ribs. "Oh, oh Rilla..."

"I know that you love him, Damien," she says, her voice softer now. "I mean, I've heard your poetry, of _course_ I know how you really feel. You love every sharp, cool, mismatched, scaly bit of him just like I do. And I understand how you could assume that a change like this would make your life easier. But it's selfish to weigh that ease against all the ways this is _terrible_ for him. It's selfish just to weigh it against the fact that this is obviously not what _he wants_."

“_Selfish_,” Damien says breathlessly, and he _wants_ to protest further, but he can hear the echo of Arum in his head, accusing him of the same, and Rilla is wearing a look of _such_ disappointment that he manages to bite his tongue.

"He wants to just be himself again, Damien. If you woke up one day and your body was foreign and strange and bent in the wrong places, if your senses were weaker and your skin was so sensitive that it hurt and you didn't know how to even move right without possibly injuring yourself, if you couldn’t even speak to the being most close to you, wouldn't you be terrified and desperate to fix it? And then how would it feel if I came along and said that this new version of you, the one that makes you feel weak and helpless, _this_ is the version of you I like more, because it's less difficult for _me_ to deal with?"

"Rilla, oh Rilla I only meant..."

Arum’s voice in his head again, wounded and thick.

_I am glad for you, then, that this curse has made it so I am no longer such an inconvenience to you._

Damien curls towards Rilla, folding himself against her and dropping his forehead to her shoulder. "Oh I have been an utter _fiend_," he whispers. "Of course I miss him as he was, but- but I- I only thought I was the one rushing off ahead, this time. I did not stop to think how that would seem as if I were trying to leave him behind."

“You’re still not quite getting it, Damien. You’re not _rushing off ahead_,” Rilla says, exasperated but gentle as she lifts his chin so he’ll meet her eye again. “You’re not, because this, this curse? This _isn__’t_ what’s ahead of us. This is only in the way of whatever comes next. It’s easy for you to think in worst case scenarios, Damien, and I understand that, but you have to realize that even if, _somehow_, we fail to fix this, Arum is never, ever going to be okay with it. Never.”

“I-” Damien swallows, glancing away. “Is it- is being human really so very terrible?”

“For him?” Rilla pats his cheek. “_Yeah_. It _is_, actually.”

“But-”

“This isn’t real, Damien. It’s not who he _is_. He’s _not_ a human, and he never will be, and he’ll only be more miserable the longer he’s stuck like this. And I know that you love him, Damien, and I have to believe that you don’t want him stuck any way that makes him miserable.”

“_No_,” Damien half-shouts. “No, never, of course I- I only want him to be happy, happy and _safe_-”

“Then you need to _understand_ that you’ve basically implied the exact _opposite_. He isn’t happy like this. He isn’t _safe_ in a body he doesn’t know how to even _use_, let alone defend himself in. And he can’t be happy _or_ safe while he’s disconnected from his Keep. On some level, Damien, you _have_ to know that.”

Damien-

Damien feels it like a fishhook in his heel, the truth he has been willfully ignoring, the reality he has been trying to outpace while it left bloody prints behind him, a jagged metal tether that has pierced his beloved ten times deeper than himself. Every wince, every ounce of heartbreak in those wilted-violet eyes- every pain Damien acted as if he could soothe by pretending that time, if nothing else, would heal, if he could only wait long enough.

As if Arum’s misery _now_ is a price that Damien could pay, for an _easier_ life with him, somewhere down the road.

Damien stares at nothing, his breaths coming sharp and shallow, and he remembers the _look_ on Arum’s face, in the moment before Damien was thrust out of the Keep.

_How many mistakes must I make, Saint Damien? How many times must I hurt him? Oh, my lily, what have I done to you, when such evils already beset upon you? Oh Saint Damien above-_

“I think you should go stay in the barracks tonight,” Rilla says, voice firm.

Damien’s heart drops so fast, so hard, that he’s surprised it doesn’t make a sound. “Rilla-”

“You need to step back for a bit,” she says, “and really, _really_ think. And I need you to understand that I’m not telling you to leave so that you’ll _feel bad_. Honestly, Damien, I love you, but I don't have time to be particularly worried about _your_ feelings right now." She exhales. “You need to think, and I need to be over there helping Arum. That’s just how it has to be, right now.”

“Rilla,” Damien says, pleading even as she stands, and steps away from him.

“In fact-” she picks up her bags, “I should get back to the Keep, like, _now_. Arum really shouldn’t be alone like this.” Damien winces at that, but her eyes are narrowed, focused somewhere past him for a moment before she sighs. “Just… think about things, okay? _Really_ think, and try to consider how _he_ feels right now, because that’s what’s important. I’ll be back tomorrow and we can talk about where to go from here.”

“But, I-” he stands to follow her, gasping in a panicked breath. “I _know_ I hurt him, Rilla, I don’t want to simply leave that wound to fester-”

“Injury metaphors aren’t your friend in conversations with me, Damien, you know that,” she says mildly. “The thing is, you can’t start to fix any of this until you _really_ understand why the things you said hurt him, and I’m not convinced that you do, yet. Go back to the barracks. _Think_. And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rilla calls out to the Keep for a portal, but there’s no immediate response. She hesitates, a shadow of worry crossing her face.

“Keep? Can you… can you hear me?” She pauses again. “Oh Saints, I didn’t think it was this bad, I shouldn’t have left. What if it can’t hear us? It would take two weeks to get to the swamp on foot and Arum-”

She cuts off as a cluster of vines raise from the dirt, and the Keep sings, but it isn’t quite a portal. The song isn’t the usual soft, wavering greeting, either. Damien realizes with a pang that the Keep sounds _suspicious_, not quite _angry_, but certainly uncertain and unwilling and hurt.

“Keep?” Rilla says gently, and it sings again, a little more firmly.

Damien has a suspicion of his own, as to why the Keep is hesitating. He closes his eyes for a moment, swallowing his shame, and then he takes a few definitive steps away from the flowerpot, from the Keep. “I- I am not going to try to come through,” he says, his voice low so that it won’t tremble. “I understand that I am- that I am _unwelcome_, at the moment.”

Rilla looks at him, frowning, and he averts his gaze to the floor, but after a moment the Keeps sings in a way that sounds at least mildly relieved and a portal slowly begins to curl out of the flowerpot.

“Good,” Rilla says, her voice relieved though her expression is wry. “_Saints_. Thank you, Keep.” She steps back towards Damien to squeeze his hand one more time. “I’ll be back. Just- try to think about what I said, okay? We can get through this. I _know_ we can.”

She smiles, and he tries to summon a weak smile of his own for her sake, but when she drops his hand again and steps away he cannot maintain the expression.

And then she’s gone, the portal closing behind her, and Damien is alone.


	4. Guardians of a Rare Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Self care is vital in times of crisis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all needed a little soft. And therefore this is. the LONGEST chapter so far. 
> 
> Chapter title from the song Riches and Wonders, by The Mountain Goats. However the song that best fits the general tone of the day is Soft, by Babygirl.

Rilla steps through the portal and emerges on the other side in Arum’s workshop. She sighs in frustration, ready to scold Arum for trying to work in his current state, but as she glances around the workshop she realizes it’s empty. Is the Keep really that disoriented by all this? Did it bring her to the wrong room? “Uh, Keep? Where’s Arum? I need to see him.”

The response comes slow, and maybe a little softer than usual, but Rilla can hear the warning in its tone all the same. _Of course. _After Damien… Of course it would be afraid for Arum- afraid of _Rilla_, and what she might say to him. If he’s really as upset as Damien said…

“Keep, _please_. Let me see him. Damien made a mistake. You _have_ to let me see him. Please_,_ he has to know that we’re going to fix this. He can’t think that-“

She cuts off as the Keep lets out a relieved sigh, and she hears the shifting of vines. She watches as the Keep carries a mass of vines and leaves over to her and deposits it gently at her feet. She can see the shape of Arum curled up, nestled and tucked into the bramble. She can just barely see his face through the tangle of foliage, and his (painfully plain) gray eyes refuse to meet hers.

She gives a relieved sigh of her own, setting her bags down and moving closer to the vines.

“Arum-”

"Has he sent you to convince me?" Arum says, low and bitter, only half his face visible through the Keep’s embrace. "To present me with some ultimatum? Some simple human mathematics to bolster his case?"

"Arum, you know-"

"I suppose the _numbers_ add up, when you truly simplify it, don't they? The happiness and convenience of two humans held against the desires of one monster- oh, and the monster's home, as well, but it isn't as if there is anyone left to understand and translate for it, so it does not really _matter_ what opinion the Keep holds on the matter, does it? And besides, I am sure we are all _well_ aware of the relative value placed on the wishes of a _monster_, anyway. Or- _ha_, or do my desires count for more, now that I am one of _you_?"

“No. _Listen_ to me-”

Arum laughs, or chokes, she can’t quite tell. “A more effective curse than even _they_ intended, I would wager. Weaken me, mute my bond with my creator, force me to face the conditional nature of human affection-“

“_Arum_. Damien is an insensitive _ass_, and he _fucked up_.”

Arum’s eyes finally meet hers, then, and it nearly breaks her to see the pain and hope shining there, the redness from the tears already shed, the shine from those that might still fall. Saints, oh saints but he doesn’t deserve this-

“What?” he says, suspicious, and Rilla sighs.

“I’m sorry,” she says gently. “I know- I know that Damien said some just- _profoundly_ callous things to you. He’s- he’s just-” she shakes her head. “I just shouldn’t have left like that. I’m _so_ sorry you and the Keep got stuck alone like this. That wasn’t what I wanted for you.” She pauses, biting her lip. “Are you- are you gonna let me in, or do you wanna have this conversation through branches? That wasn’t a judgment- whatever makes you more comfortable is fine by me.”

Arum looks away again, working his jaw soundlessly for a moment before he mutters something she can’t quite hear. There is a pause, and then the Keep shifts the vines around him, creaking them apart but not away until it opens a little window. She can see him a little better, then, see him shrunk in on himself, curled into an even tighter ball inside the embrace of his home.

She plops down on the floor beside him, because she'd rather die than try to pull him away from the Keep right now, and he tilts his head just slightly, though he does not move either towards or away from her.

"If the Keep is giving hugs, mind if I get in on that? Group hugs with mom are honestly the _best_," she says mildly, and it startles a weak laugh out of him, and after a moment or two he lifts his arms and the vines part a little more, widening the cozy space inside the tangled thicket. Relieved, Rilla slips in beside Arum, and the steady softness of the moss and leaves around the both of them is almost too comforting for Rilla’s worried mind to bear.

When she’s settled in the small space, her arms safely around Arum, she sighs, her brow furrowing. Arum very clearly doesn't know what to _do_ with himself. He keeps moving his hands, slipping them from her shoulder blades to her arms to her lower back, unsettled and uncertain, and she realizes after a moment that he can’t settle because he wants to be holding her more tightly. He wants to hold her as he usually does, and he _can't_, now. He only has half the hands he is used to holding her with.

"I'm so sorry, Arum,” she says, and this close she barely has to do more than whisper. “We're gonna _fix_ this, though. If we can keep from killing each other over methodology, we can figure out _anything_, right?"

Arum _sags_ against her.

"I..." he hisses through his teeth, a pale shadow of the noises he _should_ be able to make. "I intended to say that I have overcome worse. I do not actually know if that is true, this time."

“I mean, we’ve both almost died more than a few times by now, so…”

“And yet,” Arum mutters, his soft blunt fingers fluttering against her shoulders. He sighs. “Amaryllis, I…”

“I’m sorry, Arum,” she says again, steady as a boulder, soft as moss. “I’m here, now. I’m _here_.”

For a moment, he’s glad he’s slumped into her, that she can’t see his face. The line between crying and not-crying is becoming blurrier, and Arum is so, _so_ tired. He can't even tell, anymore, if he's crying because of the near-pain, or out of relief because he _knows_ that it's going to be okay because Amaryllis is _here_ now and she’s promised they’re still going to fix this, that she _understands _how hard this is for him, or if it’s because even despite his relief at her presence, his thin belief that they will somehow make this right again, that still doesn't mean any of this is okay _now_.

"Of course-" he tries to straighten up, but she can feel the way he's trying to accommodate for a tail that is no longer there, and she has to force herself not to wince, not to let the heartbreak show on her face. "Of course, you are the only human whose mind I would trust with a task such as this. Brighter than the lot of your entire tepid species."

Normally she would poke him in the snout for a comment like that. Right now she just scowls, the look in her eye indicating clearly that she knows he's being snarky on purpose. "And you're not so bad yourself, obviously. We'll figure it out. We'll get your real body back."

Arum closes his eyes, sighs, nods against her shoulder.

"We need to get you more stable before you start trying to do science _or_ magic, though, Arum," she says, and he grumbles but he is shaking, just a little, and he knows her stubbornness too well to protest, just now. "And... and then at some point, we need to talk to Damien."

Arum flinches, his eyes flying open, and then they narrow disdainfully. "_No_."

"Arum-"

"He- Amaryllis, I cannot bear to _look_ at him. I cannot- Amaryllis he looks at this body- this _stranger_, and his eyes _shine_, already wondering at all the ways this will _fix things_, will _fix_ his aberrant affection for such a horrible _monster_-"

His cheeks are wet, again. Rilla can feel her own heart cracking, and she wishes she could parse out how much of this is just the strange new body, and how much is the hurt. It wouldn't help to know, but- "I know. I'm sorry for that, too, but you know that he loves _you_, Arum. He _does_."

"Then _why_? _Why_ look at me that way? Like he is already living in the future, where his days with a monster are past and forgotten? Why yearn for _proper_ kisses, as if every affection passed between us was some poor imitation?" He scoffs. “He _loves me_. Perhaps. But it is _always_ in _spite_. In spite of everything I am. _Despite_ the fact that I am a monster, he _loves me_."

“Arum,” she says softly.

"He loves me and feels it as a flaw in himself,” he continues, sneering. “He loves me and feels himself broken because of it. That has- that has been thrown into stark relief today, Amaryllis. And I cannot push the question from my mind- if this is how he l-” he squeezes her tighter, and the pressure is all wrong, halved and without the cool touch of claws, and when he tries again, his voice has gone so very quiet that she would not be able to hear him if she pulled away another inch. “If this is the way he loves me, Amaryllis, in _contempt_ of everything I am, is that- is that love at all? Is that anything like it? I have very little _practice_ in this arena, certainly, but it cannot be- it cannot be _this_.”

Rilla can’t help but press a soft kiss to Arum's brow, not wanting the touch to be overwhelming but unable to clamp down on the need to soothe. "He's still caught up in how the Citadel _expects_ him to be. He _does_ love you, Arum. He loves you _so much_, just like I do, and he's _trying_. And when I talked to him he- he knows that he's messed this up. He knows he hurt you. And I know that none of that makes this any better, and I know that you’re really vulnerable right now and he tripped right into that, Arum, but-" she feels her heart clench, "but even if you _can't_ forgive him." She stops again, and _dammit_ she's not going to cry too. She's _not_. "Even if this is how this thing breaks, I think you owe it to him and you owe it to yourself to tell him exactly how you feel. To tell him yourself how he hurt you, and if he wants your forgiveness he can ask for it _then_."

He doesn't respond right away. She imagines the ticking rattle that usually accompanies his slow thoughtful pauses and it burns like a hot coal in her stomach, and then Arum presses his face into her collarbone and clenches his jaw.

"Please," she says, just quietly. "We don’t have to do it right _now_, and honestly it’ll probably be better to let things settle a little bit first, but I don't... I don't think you really want the last things you say to each other to be... to be _that_."

Arum sighs again after a long moment. "I don’t… understand. You are just as human as _he_ is," he mutters. "Yet _you_ seem as eager as I, to restore my proper body. Certainly it would be _freeing_," he sneers, "for you as well, to love another human. That is- _that_ is what I find _most_ painful, Amaryllis. The longer I consider his words the more I fear he may be _right_. I only make your lives more _difficult_, do I not? My own pain and discomfort aside, would your lives not be so much simpler if I were human? We would not have to hide, you would not have to lie to _protect_ me or yourselves-“

“But you _aren’t human_.” Rilla scowls, and she feels _hot_ with anger. “It doesn’t matter what they _did_ to you. You are _not_ a human. You are Lord Arum, He Who Rules the Swamp of Titan’s Blooms. You are a monster, and that’s exactly who we fell in love with. Not some human. _You_. We fell in love with _you_. We fell in love with _Lord Arum_.”

Arum sinks further into her embrace as she speaks, his breaths slowing, growing more even.

"Love is always complicated," she continues, voice softer. "And yeah, loving a monster is new for both of us, just like I bet loving humans is new and strange for you. But it’s… _harder_ for Damien, to let go of the way he thought before. I was never like Damien, though. I never _wanted_ to fit into the Citadel the way he did. There's a reason why I'm still 'of Exile', Arum. I _chose_ to keep that, and I chose to be with _you_. I chose to be with a magical construct with gorgeous scales and four arms and a tail and a bad temper, and I'm not giving you up without a damned _fight_."

Arum pauses for another long moment, and then he swallows roughly. "Amaryllis... I- you know that I- I love you," he rasps. "Very dearly."

Not going to cry. Dammit. _Dammit_. "I love you too, Arum." She closes her eyes, pressing her face into his neck, missing his frill, trying to let his arms and the vines of the Keep around them steady her. "I'm sorry we can't seem to catch a damned _break_," she says with a weak, wavering laugh.

"If..." he hesitates, "if you think I should... _speak_ with him again, I will... I will trust your judgment," he murmurs, eyes downcast. "If you believe he will listen to what I need to say. _Truly_ listen."

"I think he will," Rilla says softly, and then she kisses his cheek and lets herself smile. "And if he _doesn't_? I'll just go ahead and kick him in the shins, and then the Keep can dump him in the wettest part of the swamp to think about what an asshole he's being for a little while."

The Keep gives a satisfied sort of warble as Arum half chokes on a laugh, and if it sounds like a sob on the back half Rilla's certainly not going to mention it.

She cups his face in her hands. "Whatever happens, I love you and I'm with you, and we'll figure the rest out together. Okay?"

"... Okay." Arum leans up, hesitates, and then presses the line of his mouth against the edge of her jaw, and it's strange and stiff and awkward and she is _not going to cry_, no matter how much her heart is breaking for the casual nuzzle of a scaled snout. They're going to _fix_ this, so there's no reason to cry about it. "Okay," he repeats. "I believe you. Despite my better judgment."

“Okay,” Rilla says, her hands gentle upon him.

“It’s not as if I could stop you anyway,” he mutters. “I think the Keep can hear you better than it can hear me, just now.”

Well. That hurts too.

“Alright,” she says. “_Alright_, we’ve done enough collective moping for today, huh?”

Arum makes a noise, and she imagines that he’s attempting to growl. “I am not _moping_, Amaryllis-”

"No, no, I think we both were, for a minute there. But I’ve had about enough of it, I think. And as cozy as it is cuddled up in here - _thank_ you, Keep, I really needed this too - I think we need to get you a little bit cleaned up, maybe.”

“Cleaned-” Arum hunches, defensive, and swipes his hand across his face again.

“First thing you did in this body was to fall in the dirt, Arum, and your hair has literally never been washed before. And, yeah, I think you’ll feel better if you can wash your face, too.” She smiles, as best she can. Little things, just little things until she can shift her focus to fixing the one _big_ thing. “That sound good?”

“I don’t need you to- to _coddle_ me,” he mutters, but he makes no move to push her away.

“Look, it won’t _fix_ anything, but you’ll _feel_ better if you’re not all grimy and stuck in robes that don’t currently fit you.” She shrugs. “If you wanna call that coddling, fine, but I just want you to be as comfortable as possible right now.”

He considers that.

“Fine, fine. Keep,” he pauses, mouth pressing awkwardly closed for a moment. “Keep, can you… hear me?”

Another pause, perhaps a little shorter than before, and then the Keep sings around them, light and attentive, and Arum exhales in obvious relief.

“Prepare a bath, if you would,” he asks, soft, and the Keep chimes a clear affirmation, the leaves of their small shelter shivering around them. “Good. Yes. Th-thank you.”

Rilla holds Arum gently for another moment, then releases him so she can press her palms against their shelter, and the tangle surrounding them slowly creaks outward until they can clamber out. Rilla carefully helps Arum back to his unsteady feet, making sure that he’s leaning safely against her as she leads him through the new portal the Keep has provided to the washroom. It’s heartening, that the Keep is stable enough to do so without explicit instruction.

“Alright,” Rilla says as the enormous cupped-leaf basin that serves as the Keep’s bathtub fills with gently steaming water, “get your robes off, and then when we’re done I’ll find something that fits you a little better for the moment.”

Arum- flinches, clinging to the soft purple cloth covering his unfortunate new frame despite the way it still overwhelms his senses. “I- but-”

“Arum, I’m a _doctor_, I’ve seen like, hundreds of naked human bodies. It’s not even close to a big deal.” She glances away, and then back towards him with a painfully understanding look, and she does not _say_ that she knows he does not want to look at himself like this, not bare and vulnerable, but he knows that _she_ knows, all the same.

He huffs, but then he rolls his eyes. “I suppose that makes sense,” he grumbles, and then he steels himself and starts to pull the robes off, wincing as he goes, gritting his teeth as the cloth slides over his sensitive skin, shuffling it down and baring a decidedly uncomfortable amount of this soft terrible skin to the open air.

“Oh- _dammit_, Arum, hold on-”

Arum blinks and freezes as Rilla comes close, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and angling the limb so she can see his forearm. With no small degree of bewilderment he sees a distinct scrape, speckled with grit and purpling dark with bruise beneath the redder parts of the wound.

“I- when did-”

“_Probably_ right when you first changed- when you _fell_,” Rilla says, her brow furrowed with irritation. “You must’ve hit a rock or a root or something, and you didn’t notice because of all of the _rest_ of it.”

Arum huffs, gritting his blunt teeth together. “Ridiculous fragile body cannot handle a fall of a few feet? Absolutely _absurd_-”

“Hold still, would you?”

Her medical bag is still at her hip, and she starts methodically pulling out what she needs to treat the injury as Arum stands and scowls and shuffles his feet. Now that he is _aware_ of the wound it feels sharp and strange, much more _present_ than a similar scrape would have been on his scales. That would have merely been _superficial_, and certainly this must be as well (humans cannot _possibly_ be fragile enough to take permanent damage from so small a mishap, they simply _cannot_), but regardless it feels so _vivid_. To feel an injury this much in his proper form, it would need to truly pierce his scales, not- _bruise_ him.

There is a safety in the look on Amaryllis’ face as she attends him, though. A familiarity. In matters of healing her focus is always unwavering, a universal force he trusts without needing to even consider it. By the time the bandages are safely wrapped around his new skin, his new injury (do bandages always _itch_ on human skin?), he feels reassured for more reasons than just the treatment of the wound.

Amaryllis solves problems.

Foolish as it may be, he trusts that she will help him fix this one.

“There,” she says, voice soft and steady, and instead of letting go of his arm, she simply slips her hand down to take his, brushing their fingers together with barely any pressure at all. “Now. Let’s get you in the water, okay?”

Her grip on his hand is a bit tighter as he dips his toes in, and it’s a good thing, too, because these damned feet have no _grip_, no claws or scales for traction, and he nearly slips on the edge. She keeps hold of him, though, and with no major incident and only muted grumbling he settles into the mellow warmth of the water. It is still… somewhat overwhelming, but less so than the cloth of his robes, and at least with the water in the way he doesn’t really have to _look_ at his current form. He cups his hands in the water first, then, and splashes his face, as if one sort of water can pretend away another. He does… feel _marginally_ better, after even just that little bit.

Rilla sets her bag aside and settles to sit by the edge of the basin behind him, taking the basket of soaps and other mysterious jars and oils that the Keep dutifully hands to her with a smile, and Arum tries his level best not to feel like a damned helpless hatchling, forced to rely on Amaryllis and his Keep for something so very simple as bathing himself.

The frustration must show on his face, though, because Rilla’s expression goes infuriatingly sympathetic again, and she sets the basket down and reaches out, gently nudging him forward.

“Lean back for me?” she says, soft, and he gives her a suspicious look. “Gotta get your hair wet before anything else,” she elaborates, and Arum works his jaw stubbornly, still feeling so unutterably _humiliated_ for a tense moment before Rilla exhales sharply. “C’mon, you’ve helped me wash _my_ hair before, just- let me do this for you. I _want_ to do this for you, Arum.” She pauses. “_Please_.”

Arum looks away from her, his throat feeling tight, and then he leans into hands, allowing her to dip his head into the bath, the bizarre sensation of warm water on his scalp making him shiver.

“Okay,” she murmurs when he’s up again, and then he hears her uncork something, and then she says, quite seriously, “You have to let me know if it feels like too much, Arum. Okay? Last thing I want right now is to make anything worse.”

He grumbles something wordless, not really wanting to acknowledge the idea that a simple _touch_ might push him past some limit, but she does not touch him yet.

“Promise me you’ll tell me, Arum,” she says behind him, and Arum is absolutely certain that he has never in his entire long life done anything to deserve this degree of care.

“Fine, Amaryllis, _fine_, I will inform you if this pathetic form is overwhelmed by _soap_, are you happy?” he gripes, and he is satisfied to hear her laugh lightly at his back.

He sighs, settling an inch or so deeper into the water, covering his shoulders, and then he feels her hands, just light at the nape of his neck, slipping up into his unfamiliar mess of hair, and Arum’s eyes slip closed without a thought.

It feels-

It is _intense_, certainly, especially when whatever soap she is applying starts to foam, and when she starts to work her careful fingers through the tangles, attentively working them out, her blunt nails dragging along his scalp, he understands why his humans- why _Amaryllis_ enjoys it so, when he runs careful claws through her own hair.

“So, obviously, this whole situation is rough,” Rilla says suddenly, without preamble, and Arum scoffs at the understatement as he pulls his knees towards his chest, curling into a more awkward ball. “I'm not going to pretend that it's not, Arum, and I don’t expect you to be _happy_ about any of it. That being said, though… you know, it doesn't have to be _all_ misery and gloom. You've got a pretty unique opportunity, here!" She grins, pulling a hand from his hair and rinsing off the soap so she can touch his shoulder, stroking her thumb over the crook of his neck and watching the way that makes him shiver. "We'll get your body back. _Obviously_." She shrugs, as nonchalant as she can manage even though he’s still facing away, even though he can’t see her. "But in the _meantime_, you get to have, just, a _bunch_ of unique new experiences that it's unlikely that any other monster has ever gotten to have!"

"Such as... _what_, precisely, Amaryllis?" He glances at her suspiciously over his shoulder, but he is leaning towards her as he resumes his former position, allowing her hands back in his hair and obviously more curious than he wants to let on.

Which. Saints bless. It's been so hard to see him this unsteady, this upset, and if she can just draw back some of the fire in him- well, he deserves to at least have _some_ good in this horrible ordeal. Plus, gauging his reactions to new stimuli might turn out to be helpful in figuring this mess out, too. Rilla is a big fan of tasks with multiple purposes.

"Like... right now, like how you’re getting first-hand experience in how it feels when you play with my hair." She grins, and Arum’s posture goes a little stiff, his face a little blank, because it feels as if she has plucked that thought from his very mind. "You can see how it feels to us, to touch things with our _fragile human skin_. I can show you how kissing like a _human_ feels, just for comparison." She pauses, and he glances over his shoulder again to see the slightly awkward tilt of her smile. “If- if you would like that, I mean.”

“A-ah.” He flushes dark. She misses the frill pretty acutely, for a moment, but it's interesting to have confirmation of her perpetual suspicion; Arum blushes easily.

Her smile softens again, and she cups his cheek very, very gently in her less-soapy palm. "We'll fix this sooner rather than later, so you'd better see what all this _being human_ stuff is about before we change you back, right?"

“If… if you _say_ so, Amaryllis.”

“I _do_ say so,” she says, and he assumes that the smugness in her voice is a veneer. He can respect that. Her hands scrub across his scalp with just slightly more pressure and he- he cannot give the gentle throaty rumble he wishes he could, but he can sigh, at least. “Lean back for me again?”

He does as instructed, indulging the herbalist with a mild frown, and when his hair is submersed her careful touch works to rinse the soap out, and even if it feels just on the bare edge of overwhelming it is the most pleasant sensation he has felt in this body so far.

Damien always loves to say that their herbalist has healing hands. Arum abhors hyperbole, but at least in this assessment, Sir Damien speaks with precision.

He lifts out of the water again, and Rilla works something new into his hair, something smoother. Then she holds out a cloth over his shoulder, for him to take. “Here. Help me multitask and we can get you out of there before the water gets too cold.”

Arum takes proffered cloth from Amaryllis, but as she hands him the bottle of soap he fumbles it. His grip is all wrong, he no longer has to accommodate for sharp claws, and so his loose grip and stubby fingers are not strong enough to hold the nearly full bottle. It falls into the bath with a loud splash, and he snarls automatically and flinches away from the water that splashes up into his face. This- this _absurd_ body, these _hands_. The frustration- the frustration he cannot even find words for, of trying to reach, trying to catch with limbs that are no longer a part of him, and he feels so _useless_ as Amaryllis gently reaches around him to pull the bottle up out of the water and pour a bit of soap onto the cloth for him.

He bites back a snappy remark about how at least she trusts him with a _cloth_, if not a soap bottle, because she’s… trying. This is difficult and frustrating for him, but that doesn’t mean he has any right to take it out on her. She’s trying so hard to make this better for him. He knows she’s not… _judging_ him for this. He hates feeling _pitied_ (Damien’s voice in his mind, overly saccharine and indulgent and eager: _I am sorry you have been so maligned, darling, but no curse could ever-_) but Rilla doesn’t make him feel that way. Of course she’s _sorry_ for him and he knows that, but she never makes him feel uncomfortable. She’s always rational and logical, never overwhelming him with emotions like… well.

He shakes his head to clear that thought and focuses on the feel of Amaryllis’s hands in his hair again, slow and easy. After a moment, he takes the washcloth and begins to run it over his arms. As he runs it over his left arm - careful to avoid getting the fresh bandages wet - he notices the skin there, just above his elbow, is unmarked. The scar that he’s… grown accustomed to, since his first meeting with the little knight, is gone. As if it never happened.

It’s… _fitting_, he thinks bitterly. He can almost imagine what Sir Damien would think of this new development. _You see, my love, just as this new form brings a new kind of freedom to our relationship, so, too, are the old injuries and mistakes erased_.

He bites down a laugh he would be unable to explain to Amaryllis. How Damien would _thrill_ at the idea of that old injury merely ceasing to exist. How happy he would be, to know the harm he had caused could simply vanish from the world as though it never occurred. The harm, yes, and also- also the erasure would absolve Sir Damien of his heresy, that blasphemous mercy his Citadel would only ever condemn him for. As if it never occurred.

It would never occur to Damien that the mark he left on Arum would be… significant. A reminder of exactly why he lo- of where his interest in Sir Damien began. A single act of mercy, and with it a promise. A promise that Arum’s monstrous nature was not enough on its own to condemn him to death. A promise that Damien _wanted him, _a monster. Wanted him alive, if nothing else, and then _more_ than just that.

Now even that simple, meaningful mark is gone. Just as Damien-

Well. Amaryllis does not wish for him to wallow in misery in gloom, does she? Why he is even _thinking_ of the poet now- it’s ridiculous. He is being _ridiculous_, and all the while Rilla is steady behind him, hands holding him as safe as he can be in this form, and he should allow himself to enjoy that, shouldn’t he? He cannot say how much longer he will be allowed it, after all.

Because even if Amaryllis is correct, even if they can overcome this, even if this time tomorrow Arum is wearing his own skin again, he cannot say what will come of his- his _relationship_ with these humans he has allowed into his home. Into his- into his heart. His two partners were intertwined long before they knew him, after all. If he breaks from one of them-

How could he expect the other not to break as well?

Arum feels his throat clench again, feels the tension in his chest that he is unfortunately becoming quite familiar with.

Arum- Arum needs to let her know. To let her know it’s _okay_. She has offered so much- so much gentleness and care, more than he could possibly deserve, and-

He may as well say it now, he thinks. He may as well say it while her hands are upon him, while he needs not look her in the eye. He does not think he would have the bravery to say this, otherwise.

"I know you have promised, Amaryllis, to... to assist me in this. To help restore my form." He pauses, and she doesn't, her hands steady and soothing in his strange new hair, working some mysterious softness through his dark locks. "But… but I will understand, if Sir Damien and I cannot reconcile-" he swallows, and forces himself to continue. "I will understand if you and I must part as well, in turn."

Her hands finally stop moving, and she pulls them away to rinse off in the water before she tilts his face back towards her, cupping his cheeks in her hands. "Arum. _What_?"

"I would not ask you to part with your betrothed," he says, and he still cannot meet her eye because if he does he will dissolve again to nonsense, because all he wishes to do is draw her closer and closer until she can never leave, because he is _selfish_. "If he and I- if we cannot endure this together, I do not expect that you will humor me alone after you are finished with the task of restoring me to myself. I would not ask this of you."

Her breath catches, and it doesn't sound quite like a laugh. "Arum. Do you really think that I would just-"

"There would be a symmetry to it," he murmurs, very suddenly unwilling to hear her confirm his suspicions. "A symmetry- you came into my life because I needed you to heal my Keep- if we parted after you helped to heal _me_\- yes, it would be a rather logical arc-"

"I'm not going _anywhere_,” she says, her voice thick, and when he glances to her in surprise her eyes take on a determined glint. She pushes closer, lifting her leg over the edge of the basin and slipping into the warm water beside him fully clothed, despite his surprised yelp of protest, and she wraps her arms around him, squeezing tight. "I'm _not_ giving you up, you absolute idiot."

"Amaryllis- I- I know you feel the need to- to _comfort_ me,” he says, his new voice shivering wild like an aspen in a light breeze, “and I- I admire your kindness, you _commitment_, but-"

"_Idiot_," she hisses. "I don't know how things are going to work out between you and Damien, Arum, and yeah, I'm not going to pretend that doesn't break my heart. I'm not going to pretend it's not going to be _hard_, no matter what else happens. But I love you," she presses her face into his neck, the pads of her fingers digging sturdy and solid into his shoulder blades. "_I love you_. And I already told you, I'm not going to give you up without a _fight_."

"Amaryllis this… _us_. It's all so new, and difficult, and... Damien and yourself- you fit together so perfectly already, as though you were made for each other. I do not… I do not _belong_ with you the way that he does."

"I don't believe in fate, Arum. I believe the choices we make create our fates. And I _chose_ you, just as much as I chose Damien."

Arum squeezes his eyes shut. _Why_ she chose him, he’ll never understand. After all he did to her, after what he almost did to all of them-

"And... to be honest, Arum? If... if Damien can't see how much he's hurting you-" Rilla pauses, and Arum can feel the tension in her frame, can feel that she's holding herself rather tightly. "If he really has convinced himself that this could be _better_ for you, somehow, if he's really willing to be that selfish, and that cruel… I have a hard time believing he's still _that_ deluded, but- if he really _is_... I don't know." She exhales, her shoulders drooping. "I don't know. I- it would be... _hard_. It would be hard to- to _be_ with him, after that. I feel like I would need some time- that he and I would need some time away from each other, at least. To figure out how I feel about that."

“But-” Arum’s mouth hangs open for a moment, “I-” he pauses. “And if- if Damien and I- if we cannot reconcile, and Damien remembers that he does not wish to _share_ you with some- some _monster_ any longer?”

She scoffs, her expression going wry. "Frankly, Arum, I don't respond all that well to ultimatums. If I actually felt like I was in a position where I absolutely had to-" she makes a noise that's not really a laugh, "to _choose_ between the two of you, I don't have the first clue what I would do with that. I love both of you. I love both of you _so much_, I don't know how I would- how I could possibly-" she pauses, inhaling sharply and visibly centering herself. "But. And honestly I very much doubt that Damien would ever do this, but _if_ for _some reason_ he thought he could come and try to twist my arm in some tacky "it's him or me" scenario- well, let's just say that I don't think that would end particularly well for him."

Arum cannot speak, not for a number of breaths after that. Rilla doesn't speak either, but her silence feels more deliberate. "A-Amaryllis," he says eventually, uncertain and unsteady. "You- you should not be forced to toss aside your bond with Damien, not for my sake-"

"I wouldn't be," Rilla says, and her own voice is even, now, her cheek resting easy on his shoulder. "I’m not saying I’m gonna snap my fingers and say goodbye, but depending on how this breaks- I might need some time to think about whether or not he’s the person I think he is. And- and if that's the way it works out, it will be a choice I make for _myself_."

There is no response Arum can give to that. He can hold her, though. He can hold her, even if it feels like a half-measure, less secure with two less limbs, as if she could slip from his grasp with barely any effort.

She does not want to, though. He reminds himself of that.

“You’re gonna get all pruney if we stay in here much longer, though,” she sighs, squeezing him and then pulling back enough to meet his eye. “Did this help? Even a little?”

“_You_ helped,” he mutters, glancing away and feeling strange heat in his cheeks. “You _always_ help.”

She makes a noise, and when he looks towards her again, she-

There are tears in her eyes.

“Amaryllis,” he breathes, and she laughs strangely, lifting her hands and brushing the heels of her palms beneath her eyes.

“I know, I know,” she says in a thick sort of voice. “I’m sorry, ridiculous human emotional whatever, I’ll have a handle on it in just a second-”

“Amaryllis,” he says again, and he draws her closer, lifting a hand and almost, almost touching her cheek. “No, no apologies, Amaryllis. You-”

She has been holding herself _so_ carefully, he realizes. Spine straight, hands gentle, smile sturdy. And she has been doing so for _his_ sake.

“No,” she says, sighing as if the tears are an irritating sort of imposition, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, just gimme a sec, here-”

“I love you,” Arum says, helpless against the tide of it, and her breath hitches as he cups her cheek and thumbs away a tear and he- he hates this curse all the more, that it is hurting her, too.

She looks up at him (less _up_ than usual, but still), her lips tilting wryly, and Arum-

Arum sways towards her.

He is accustomed to brushing the thin, inelastic line of his mouth across their lips in request, accustomed to allowing the humans to lead a ‘kiss’ as they desire it, but this time when his mouth meets hers he has even less idea what to do than he normally does.

He understands the fondness they have for the act, though. Why this gentle human curve is so intensely _sensitive_ is beyond his understanding, but the strange sharp tingle of even this unpracticed, unsure kiss is like some sort of wildfire. _Skin_. However humans manage not to collapse from the intensity of every touch is a mystery.

He also realizes, with some mortification, that he does not know at _all_ what to do next.

In his own body, he would-

He parts his lips, nipping Rilla’s bottom lip with these odd blunt teeth, and she laughs in surprise, pulling away just enough to meet his eye before she dissolves into laughter again.

That is like wildfire, too. Her laughter. The brightness it kindles in his own heart. He smiles when she collects herself, and she shakes her head at him.

“Ridiculous lizard,” she mutters, breathless, and Arum can’t help but laugh along with her.


End file.
